by Susan Conant
My smile crept back. Cheryl was halfway down the muddy drive. As she approached, I tried to listen hard to the dogs. The high-pitched yipping certainly came from the house. The stench came from everywhere, including, it seemed to me as Cheryl Simms drew near, from the young woman herself. Her pale hair was thin and matted, and she had the blotched skin of someone who lives mainly on potato chips and diet soda. The hot-pink nylon protected her body from the rain, but her Reebok imitations sank into the mud. She didn’t seem to notice her wet feet or ruined shoes. If it hadn’t been for the dogs, I’d have felt guilty about luring her out with the offer of something for nothing.
Then the screen door banged hard. Walter Simms appeared on the sagging porch. His complexion, darker and better than his sister’s, would have stood up to her hot pink, but he wore a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt over tight jeans and high-topped sneakers. At his side, a handsome, sleek young male Rottweiler trembled with excitement. “Cheryl, what the hell are you doing?” Walter shouted at her. “Get back here!”
Cheryl cringed and headed toward the house.
Then Walter Simms turned his furious face toward me. “What the shit do you want? Can’t you read the fucking sign? It says to keep the fuck out of here.”
His sister was already cowering on the porch. “Walter, she’s givin’ stuff away,” Cheryl said pitifully. “She’s givin’ it for free.”
Walter looked exasperated. “For Christ’s sake, Cheryl.”
“It’s for free,” Cheryl pleaded. “For fleas. Walter, please?”
Walter turned toward me, stabbed a finger toward my briefcase, and demanded, “What the fuck’s in that?”
“Flea powder. Spray. It’s a line of flea control products.”
“Me and Cheryl don’t need none. Get the fuck out of here.”
“That’s a handsome Rottie you’ve got there,” I said. “You know, a bad case of fleas could really do a job on him. Fleas can carry tapeworms, for one thing. And a lot of dogs are allergic to fleas. If he starts scratching, he’ll tear up that beautiful coat.”
“Oh, yeah?” Simms jerked his thumb back toward the source of the yipping. “Champ’s around all them other dogs, and he never picked nothing up.”
“Well, he could,” I said, wiping the rain off my face with my free hand, “if the other dogs have fleas. Maybe you’ve just been lucky so far. You take pretty good care of Champ, don’t you?”
And, I swear to God, Walter Simms beamed. Like his Rottie, he was dark-eyed and muscular, and his face had the same well-developed cheekbones as his dog’s. “Yeah,” he confessed almost shyly. Then he turned serious. “I ain’t got no money to waste on them dogs out there,” he said, jerking his thumb once again, “but I don’t want nothing happening to Champ. That stuff really work?”
“Yes,” I lied. “I told, uh, Miss Simms. I’ll leave you the free samples.” I was as close to Walter Simms as I wanted to be. “I’ll put them in your mailbox, okay? Is that all right?”
Cheryl threw Walter a look so subservient that I almost expected her to crouch and leave a little submissive puddle on the porch at his feet.
“Is that all right?” I asked again.
Walter looked Cheryl up and down, then said, “Yeah.”
As I was stashing Flee-B-Gon containers in the mailbox, I called casually, “Hey, what’s so special about Champ? I mean, your other dogs …”
Walter Simms looked at the Rottie and clapped his hands. The sleek black-and-rust dog gave a powerful upward bound and made a springing, muscular landing at Simms’s feet. As if stating the obvious, Simms said, “Champ’s not like them others. Champ’s my dog.”
24
I left Afton that Wednesday afternoon feeling wet, weak, and cowardly. In visiting Walter and Cheryl Simms, I’d accomplished nothing. I’d smelled and heard the evidence of a puppy mill, but the only dog I’d observed had been Walter’s pet Rottie. Champ looked anything but neglected. According to Missy’s papers, Simms had malamutes, presumably including Missy’s dam, Icekist Sissy, but I hadn’t even been able to verify the presence of the breed. I’d had a small camera tucked in my shoulder bag. In retrospect, I wondered why I’d even bothered to take it with me. Had I expected Walter and Cheryl Simms to give me free run of the place to do a full-page spread for Dog’s Life?
But if Cheryl Simms had been alone there? It seemed just possible that Cheryl might at least have opened that gate. She’d eyed my briefcase of bright containers with the greediness of a deprived child. If I’d taken advantage of Cheryl’s simplicity to buy my way in, I just might have had the chance to get a couple of photos. If so, Jane Appleyard might have had the probable cause she needed to take legal action, maybe enough evidence to get the authorities to raid the damned place and permanently close it down.
As it was? I hadn’t even found out for sure that Simms had Missy. I tried to forget Missy’s open, friendly trust, the eagerness of her greeting, her puppy sweetness, that full mask on her face, the markings so much like Kimi’s. Until the previous Friday, only five days ago, Missy had spent a pampered life in the small and hot but clean and toy-packed pantry of Enid Sievers’s overstuffed raspberry house. I tried to console myself. Although Missy’s own existence had left her utterly unprepared for hardship, she was, after all, an Alaskan malamute. The breed evolved in the brutal environment of the Arctic. Some of Missy’s own ancestors had survived the unspeakable cruelty of the men and the climate in Little America. An Alaskan malamute can endure almost anything, I reminded myself. Tears filled my eyes. I pulled to the side of the road. The Byrd expeditions are the stuff of my nightmares. Why in God’s name had I looked to Antarctica for consolation?
When I’d blown my nose and pulled myself together, I decided that instead of heading directly back to Cambridge, I’d detour through Westbrook and stop at Your Local Breeder. Gloria Loss had been due to start work there this morning. She’d had very little time to discover anything, and Janice Coakley had probably kept her busy cleaning out kennels and scrubbing kibble off food bowls. I probably wouldn’t even have a chance to talk to Gloria alone; Janice Coakley might not trust a new employee to deal with a customer. Even so, I’d already established myself with Janice as a potential puppy buyer—there’d be nothing suspect about a second visit—and Westbrook wasn’t far out of my way.
When I drove up to Your Local Breeder, the parking lot by the kennel building held three cars, one of which, a charcoal gray Volvo sedan, turned out to have a Cambridge resident parking permit on its dashboard. Adhering to the back bumper of the car was a campaign sticker for a candidate for the Cambridge City Council, a radical feminist lesbian woman whose chances of election were deemed slight. Why? Most observers agreed that, given her conservative views, she didn’t stand a chance. Cambridge: Berkeley with lousy weather. Anyway, maybe my luck had turned. At least Gloria hadn’t quit or been fired.
Far from it. I found Gloria in Ronald’s old place, perched on the stool behind the counter in the kennel supply shop at the front of Your Local Breeder. Unlike Ronald, Gloria was working. In fact, she was ringing up a sale. Although she looked far from beautiful, the change in her appearance was remarkable. She’d obviously washed her hair, which hung in neat dark braids, and, in place of Sunday’s gloomy drapery, she wore a starched white shirt. Her skin was still an erupted mess of acne, of course, but she’d lost some of her neglected, hapless air.
On the opposite side of the counter stood a blond, freckle-faced woman and three blond, freckle-faced little girls. In the world of dogs, the ability to produce miniature versions of oneself, as if by parthenogenesis, is called prepotency. This was obviously a prepotent dam. With a vaguely reluctant look on her face, she was paying Gloria for a tiny, adorable Finnish spitz puppy that rested in the arms of the tallest of the three children.
“Now,” the woman said to Gloria, as if concluding a discussion, “you’re very sure that they don’t bark?”
You know what a Finnish spitz is? Cutest breed in the world, just like a darling
little fox. I’d get one tomorrow, except for one thing: yapping. As if tuned to my thoughts, the puppy launched into a series of ear-shattering yips. The woman’s eyes widened.
“She’s just nervous now,” Gloria said. “Wait till you get her home. You’ll hardly hear a peep out of her. Practically a silent breed.”
The child holding the puppy said impatiently, “Mom, who cares? This is the one we want.”
The next tallest little girl seconded her sister. “Yeah, Mom. You saw her. She ran right to us. She picked us.”
The mother conceded. Gloria handed her a receipt and a plastic bag that must have held puppy paraphernalia. The mother gave the bag to the smallest child and hefted a twenty-pound bag of premium chow in her arms. The blond family filed out.
“For Christ’s sake, Gloria,” I hissed softly, “three days ago ownership was exploitation. Remember? And now, all of a sudden … The Finnish spitz is a totally inappropriate breed for that woman.”
“They’ll be nice to the puppy,” Gloria said.
“They’ll probably have her debarked,” I whispered, “if they keep her at all. And if they sell her or give her away, those’ll be three brokenhearted kids.”
Gloria looked so crushed that I was sorry I’d spoken. The woman and her daughters had seemed kind and decent. Maybe they’d adapt to the puppy after all.
“Or maybe it’ll work out,” I added very quietly. “Are you all alone here? Where’s …”
“At her lawyer’s. Mrs. Coakley’s sister just died, and she wants to know what’s in it for her, or that’s the feeling you get. There’s an old guy around somewhere, but he doesn’t know how to work the cash register.”
“Do you?”
“Now I do,” Gloria said. “Anyhow, Mrs. Coakley didn’t have much choice. She was going to close up, but then that woman called and wanted to know if we were open, and I guess Mrs. Coakley didn’t want to lose a sale.”
We were open? What’s this we? I thought. Then I had what my friend Rita calls an ah-hah experience. This must be Gloria’s first real job, and, like any other kid her age, she was proud to find herself behind a cash register, taking money and handing out receipts. Even so, Gloria’s rapid identification with her new employer made me uneasy. Also, I remembered Mrs. Appleyard’s warning. On Sunday, Gloria had been unnaturally eager to switch her loyalty to me. Had I lost it already? Had I ever had it? I felt frightened about trusting Gloria and guilty about using her, but, as I’ve said, I’ll do anything for dogs.
I cleared my throat and asked under my breath, “Where’s this guy who works here?”
“Out back,” Gloria told me. “It’s okay. And I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
“When is Janice Coakley due back?”
“I don’t know. Half an hour maybe. She’s getting her hair done, too.”
I leaned an elbow on the counter. “Okay, but if she shows up, just start telling me about Siberian huskies or something, okay?”
“I don’t know anything about them,” said Gloria, suddenly childish.
“You know as much about them as you know about the Finnish spitz,” I said, “and you winged that all right.” Gloria smiled. I felt a pang of guilt. I still hadn’t called the dermatologist to make an appointment for her. “Walter Simms delivers puppies here,” I went on. “I know that now.”
“Yeah,” Gloria said. “A lot of them come from him. We’re supposed to tell the customers that Mrs. Coakley breeds them all, but she doesn’t, really.”
“She breeds some of them?”
Gloria pushed her braids back. “Yeah, she’s got—That’s her house, out there, in back of the parking lot. That’s where she lives. And somewhere behind there, maybe in the barn, I know she has some dogs. You can hear them. I haven’t been back there.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “But Simms brings most of them?”
“Some,” Gloria said. “He’s supposed to bring some tonight. She put in an order. That’s what she does. She calls up and orders them, what breeds she wants. I heard her. It’s weird. It’s like someone calling up a store and ordering groceries, only it’s dogs. It’s really weird.”
“I believe you.” I tried to keep the disappointment from my voice. I’d already known that that’s how pet shops order puppies, and I’d known that Simms delivered to Your Local Breeder. In hoping that Gloria would learn anything useful, I’d been kidding myself.
“Only,” Gloria continued, “at least this morning, she made two different calls. Her office door was open, and I was supposed to clean the kennels, so I did the ones close to the door.”
“Maybe she deals with more than one broker.”
“Except they’re all coming at the same time.” Gloria’s eyes were serious.
“That does seem kind of strange,” I admitted.
“So,” said Gloria, pulling herself up straight and holding her shoulders back, “as soon as Mrs. Coakley left, I went and looked.”
“You looked …?”
“It sounded fishy, and that’s what I thought you wanted, anything fishy. So as soon as Mrs. Coakley left, I went into her office.” Gloria glanced toward the back of the shop. “Back there. And the file was right on her desk, because, I mean, she’d just been making these calls, and she was going out. And it was like what she said on the phone. Like, uh, two lists. Only the other sort of strange thing was that the prices were different.”
“They would be,” I said. “Pet shops pay different prices for different breeds. They sell them for different prices, right? The puppies here don’t all cost the same, do they?”
“No, but for the same breed, they do. Like that Finnish spitz was seven hundred dollars, and some of the others are a whole lot cheaper. Like cocker spaniels are three twenty-five. But, like, all the cocker spaniels are three twenty-five, only she pays a hundred for them to one guy, and a hundred and fifty at the other place.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “So why not just get them all from the place that only charges a hundred?”
“Because those people didn’t have enough,” Gloria said. “That’s what it sounded like. We sell a whole lot of cocker spaniels, I guess, and she wanted, like, a litter of puppies, and she was supposed to get them Sunday, only she didn’t. So the first call she made, she tried to get, like, three of them, only she ended up ordering two, and the next call, she only ordered one.”
“So she got as many of the cheaper ones as she could,” I said.
“Yeah,” Gloria said. “Yeah, I mean, if you look at the lists and stuff, you can tell that’s what she did. It’s like, well, my mother’ll do this when she shops for clothes. She’ll go to T.J. Maxx, Hit or Miss, those places first, and then there’ll be stuff she can’t find discount, and she’ll go to the regular places and pay full price.”
Beano! Have I lost you? Well, then, bingo! But that’s not what it’s called at the fairs in Maine, where we still use real beans, dried ones, of course, to cover the numbers on our cards. When it comes to dogs, I’ve learned to temper my competitive spirit, thus malamutes in obedience, but when I’m seated on one of those old wooden benches in a Maine beano tent with three cards lined up in front of me on the oilcloth and I put the fifth bean in place to complete that straight, winning line? Well, I’ll tell you, I’m a killer.
“Beano!” I said out loud.
Gloria looked mystified. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind, Gloria, this is very helpful. You’re doing great. This is really helpful.” I quit leaning on the counter and began to zip up my yellow slicker. “So the first call was to Simms, right? And I bet the second one was to a guy named Rinehart.”
“That’s what the papers say,” Gloria confirmed. “Her list and the, uh, order forms, I guess you call them.”
“Simms and Rinehart,” I said. “I knew who they were, but I didn’t know what was going on. Now I do. Hey, Gloria? Thanks a whole lot. I think maybe you’ve done enough, okay? When Janice Coakley gets back, just tell her you’re allergic t
o dogs or something, or just don’t show up tomorrow.”
“But, Holly—”
“I know what’s going on, okay? I’ll explain it some other time. I’m going now. Janice Coakley’ll be back soon, and I want to get home. My dogs have been alone long enough.” Through the plate glass window, I could see that the rain had started up again. I pulled the hood of my slicker over my head.
“Holly?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you want the, uh, papers? The list and—”
I did a swift about-turn. Gloria was holding out a large manila envelope.
“Don’t you want them?” Gloria’s voice was hurt and puzzled. “They’re just copies, but I thought … The Xerox machine was right there, and I thought … I couldn’t take them, because Mrs. Coakley would notice they were gone. So I just copied them. Isn’t that good enough?”
I snatched the envelope from Gloria as eagerly as Rowdy and Kimi grab liver treats. I used my hand, of course. If I’d used my teeth the way the dogs do, Gloria would have lost a finger.
“Good enough?” I told her. “It’s beautiful.”
“Oh, and there’s one thing … About Mrs. Coakley?” Gloria’s face took on the condescension of youth for age. “She’s … This is sort of … You can tell she’s sort of in love with this guy.”
“The old guy who—?”
“No. This guy, Walter Simms. You can tell from how she says his name. She gets sort of smug sounding, like, ‘Walter’s bringing me some puppies tonight.’ Like that. It’s kind of cute, the way she says it, you know, ‘Walter.’ Like she’s bragging about her boyfriend. Is he?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Gloria said. “I was just kind of wondering.”
25
I’d missed Rowdy and Kimi so much that when I returned home, I made the mistake of greeting them on bended knee. I ended up with a scratched chin, a sore nose, and a bruised jaw. Since winning the unconditional love of these two dogs, I have sustained more injuries than I received in all my pre-malamute years. Take it from someone with the scarred knees of a retired quarterback: If a happy malamute ever makes a mad dash toward you, flatten yourself against the nearest solid vertical object. I’ve been dragged down the back stairs three times, and before I learned never to walk malamutes in icy weather, I hit the sidewalk twice. Oh, and watch out: These dogs have skulls of steel. Knock heads with a malamute, and you see double for three days. You still think you want a malamute? Well, the breed boasts a few angels, but most mals will steal food, raid the trash, chase cats, kill livestock, and kiss the burglar. When mals are shedding, your house looks like the aftermath of a sheep-shearing contest, and, with the possible exception of all terriers, they are the world’s greatest diggers and the world’s worst obedience dogs. But as soul mates? As kindred spirits? As an intelligent companion in a partnership of equals, the Alaskan malamute is without peer.